Here it is, the end of September, and the tomatoes are still rolling in.  At least now I know that three hundred tomato plants are sufficient.  I can’t even process any more tomatoes because the tomato freezer is jam packed.  So now it’s all fresh eating.  I’ll make some salsa, give lots away, make some fried green tomatoes, some pickled green tomato relish, and oven dry all the smaller fruits.

I won’t be doing any of the blue or black tomatoes next year.  They refuse to get ripe.  They were the first to set fruit and they still aren’t ripe.  Everything has passed them by.  The cherry variety has inconsistent colors at ripening and have lost much of their flavor and now are just bland and watery.  I still haven’t managed to taste any of the larger blue or black tomatoes because I can’t catch the few that have gotten ripe….literally three.  And there’s at least 60 plants.  So they are out.

Those determinates I threw in at the last minute in a crappy spot and then ignored them?  They’re now a small jungle and producing like crazy.  And they are not being determinate.  Little liars.  I learned that my Mortgage Lifters were better than the Big Zacs.  I have yet to grow a competitor in the large red tomato category that even comes close to the Mortgage Lifter.  I try every year, though.  And my other tried and true varieties were the most prolific…Purple Cherokee, Black Krim, etc.  All the volunteers have produced fruit….a Pink Brandywine, a Polish Linguisa, a red grape variety I can’t remember the name of, and the purple tomatillos.

The green varieties are rolling in now…Aunt Ruby’s German Green, Evergreen, and Cherokee Green.  I love those flavors.  The Italian varieties are plugging along.  The Costolutos are getting ripe despite being overtaken by peas that refuse to go away and the San Marzanos are ripening despite an aggressive clover that is determined to drown them out while being a snail haven.

Sauce anyone?

I’m convinced that chickens are evolved from velociraptors.  They certainly act like miniature carnivorous dinosaurs.  With feathers.  Watching them attack a snail is nothing short of horrifying.  My girlfriend Jessie took me down to the co-op as a surprise and we picked out some chicks together.  I think she secretly acknowledges what a procrastinator I am even though she graciously never brings it up.  This, in turn, forced Hubs to build the coop.  We poured over DIY plans all over the internet and finally settled on picking what we liked from a few different plans and hobbled together our own.

Let me introduce the girls.  They are Pain, Panic, Brunhilde, and Jabberbabywocky.  We had Misery, but she died on the seventh day after getting her.  She’s now under the weird tree no one can identify.  Pain is the strawberry blonde.  She’s also my favorite.  Panic is the grey one.  She’s also the most squirrelly.  Brunhilde is the leader and a Rhode Island Red.  Jabs is a Wellsummer and Hubs’s favorite.  He likes to make pictures of her next to beer can chickens on the grill.  Meanie.